‘Boom — there’s a kick in the pants as the engines fire. It's a hell of a ride’

Strapped into the craft, passengers will give a thumbs-up before being towed to the runway to set off on a flight that will take them up to 330,000ft.

“And boom —there’s a kick in the pants when we fire the engines,” explained XCOR’s Andrew Nelson.

“It’s a steep acceleration curve, and you effectively turn into a rocket. Then you’ll accelerate, and after 60 seconds pass the sound barrier, and you’ll accelerate for another two minutes, at 2.5 G force.

“At 200,000ft, the engines cut out and you’re looking into the inky black of space.

“Look over your shoulder, and you see the curvature of the earth, and feel weightlessness — it will be the ‘oh my goodness’ moment.”

At this point, the vehicle can be pointed in various directions to give passengers a choice of views as they “coast up” another 100,000ft. “You’ll get six to seven minutes of weightlessness, you’ll have toy Nerf guns to play with [to demonstrate the weightlessness], and we’ll record the experience for you,” Mr Nelson said, comparing the feeling to going over the top in a rollercoaster.

The Lynx then returns to Earth and “for 20 seconds you’ll experience 4Gs”.